Group CBT is an empirically supported treatment that is both structured and collaborative. It is based on a scientific understanding of the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. It is a short-term treatment approach that helps people identify unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaving.

We provide several groups that focus on different problems. Each group aims at helping you develop specific skills to address these problems and find new ways to live a fuller and more meaningful life.

This type of service is usually covered for individuals with extended health care benefits; however, we recommend that you follow-up with your insurance company to confirm this.

For more information, read our group descriptions below and download the accompanying fact sheets. You can also contact us if you want more information:

The CBT group for anxiety and depression consists of five different modules, with each focusing on a different CBT skill, including understanding and identifying your thoughts and emotions, making healthy behavioural changes, challenging your unhelpful thoughts, developing your problem-solving skills, and reducing fear and anxiety through exposure exercises. This program is offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, with people entering the group every three weeks.

The Core Beliefs Group focuses on identifying and challenging core beliefs (core beliefs are central beliefs that people hold about the self, others and the world) that are related to problems with depression, anxiety and interpersonal situations. The focus of this group is to help individuals first identify their core beliefs and to then challenge these beliefs through the use of emotion-focused, cognitive and behavioral strategies.

The ADHD Skills group at the OICBT is a treatment option for adults who experience symptoms of ADHD. This group was designed based on the evidence-based cognitive-behavioural therapy treatment model for ADHD. This group also integrates elements of other therapeutic techniques to more explicitly address emotion regulation and interpersonal difficulties that are also commonly experienced by adults with ADHD. This group aims to help people enhance their ability to manage their attention and activity level difficulties by teaching behavioural strategies and skills to improve their organization, reduce distractibility and procrastination, and by incorporating attention training (e.g., mindfulness), training in emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness skills, as well as education about other difficulties that may co-occur with ADHD, like sleep difficulties, mood and anxiety symptoms, and substance use.

The Making Behavioural Changes Group consists of three sessions focused on helping group members face feared situations using behavioural experiments and exposure-based CBT strategies.This group will be relevant for anyone who has completed the initial core belief group as well as introductory depression and anxiety groups at the OICBT.

The Coping with Chronic Illness Group consists of four different modules, with each focusing on a different skill to help manage a chronic health condition. Each module consists of two sessions and lasts 1.5 hours in length. In order to participate in the program, participants need to commit to two consecutive modules of weekly group therapy sessions.